453 replies to this topic

[PPK_19]

So happy that Kermode likes it! He is the toughest of critics. Did you hear his Entourage review? He tore it to pieces (even though I loved it) .

Bond is back.

[DamnCoffee]

[Whalltt]

Just watched the Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo interviews on youtube. I absolutely loved it, particularly the one with Sam Mendes. Very intimate insight on (Bond/Spectre) movie making. Intelligent questions. Honest answers... Loved it. 

 

Thanks Damncoffee for bringing it up to my attention. Also loved the review on the movie.

 

Damn, can't wait to see this movie!

Edited by Whalltt, 23 October 2015 - 10:49 PM.

[Simon]

Goodness.  Doesn't he like it...!

[thecasinoroyale]

Can't believe 'SPECTRE' is out here in the UK tomorrow. It's been a long time, but finally - here we are!

[Jim]

Can't believe 'SPECTRE' is out here in the UK tomorrow. It's been a long time, but finally - here we are!

 

That's interesting - I am constantly amazed at how quickly they can bang these things out. I know a huge amount of prep goes in but when did they start filming - December/January? No wonder they're all knackered.

[Guy Haines]

Can't believe 'SPECTRE' is out here in the UK tomorrow. It's been a long time, but finally - here we are!

 
That's interesting - I am constantly amazed at how quickly they can bang these things out. I know a huge amount of prep goes in but when did they start filming - December/January? No wonder they're all knackered.

Didn't they start the actual pre-shoot work about this time last year. I recall some photos of Austrian locations posted here and elsewhere - which led this Cbner to wonder online if a character named "Oberhauser" might be involved in the story.

The rest, as they say.......;-)

[Jim]

...is mystery.

 

(I prefer the quote that way).

 

Yes, I expect you're right - but soup to nuts in a year when that Batman thing seems to have been filming since the middle of the fifteenth century and the Star Wars job similar, is pretty impressive logistically nonetheless.

 

I have already bored myself by contemplating it as a mass logistical exercise rather than light entertainment. I will shut up now.

[Simon]

Well, since this conversational tract has begun, I too find it interesting.

 

I am a self-employed IT project manager, flitting in and out of many Telco and such industries. I too have looked upon all this with a faintly professional eye - and I couldn't conceive of all the management required to get this thing done in a year.  It is truly remarkable.

[Hockey Mask]

I'd still be painting the 206th of 1000 Day of the Dead extras.

[thecasinoroyale]

It was December 2014 they started doing shooting in/around London a day or so after the title reveal. And wrapped around...was it July? That's a long old shoot taking in lots of places and doing lots of explosive things. I'm sure the end result will be worth it for sure. I can't wait to read our reviews.

[SecretAgentFan]

No wonder they only do this every three years.

[Matt_13]

Mark Gatiss of Sherlock and Doctor Who fame tweeted that he loved it.

[Guy Haines]

...is mystery.
 
(I prefer the quote that way).
 
Yes, I expect you're right - but soup to nuts in a year when that Batman thing seems to have been filming since the middle of the fifteenth century and the Star Wars job similar, is pretty impressive logistically nonetheless.
 
I have already bored myself by contemplating it as a mass logistical exercise rather than light entertainment. I will shut up now.

Very impressive indeed and especially when you think of the knocks along the way - injuries, problems with dealing with the local authorities on location and of course the Sony leaks which caused major problems early on I dare say. To have come through that and to have produced, by all review accounts a very impressive entry in the series is, well, very impressive! :-)

[seawolfnyy]

I think it's a credit to the crew that they've put together for these last two films as well as the lack of CGI. Mendez seems to know how to run a tight shoot. Now, if only they did a better job with the title song....

[Hockey Mask]

**crickets**

[Single-O-Seven]

**crickets**

 

I prefer to think of it as a stunned silence brought on by awe.

[Hockey Mask]

Maybe they're not coming back.

[Single-O-Seven]

Maybe they're not coming back.

 

 

Taking it in for a second time, no doubt.

[PeteNeon]

I liked it. Better than Skyfall I think, less of the patriotism.

 

Gunbarrel was great, nice mix of the classic style for the first time since DAD, with the blood that's been used since QoS.

 

Still not a fan of the retro throwbacks, they just don't suit the world established in Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace. Namely the gadget controls in the brand spanking new DB10! And the explosive watch... now that was doubly weird cos we didn't get any setup for it early in the film... oh Craig has a Brosnan-style watch, of course he does!

 

Nice nods to the previous films, I'm glad they mentioned Quantum and Greene! Just odd then that the titles feature the villains from the previous films, except Greene!  And then later, at the base, Blofeld mentions Quantum I think... or he references a few things including something from QoS... next minute, twice he reels off mentions of the previous films, but nothing from QoS. Then later, in the MI6 building, photos of Le Chiffre, Vesper, Silva, M, Mr. White, but no Greene. Just like they went "We'll reference QoS a few times, but not too often".

 

I just wish they were a bit more logical with their references. Why can't the DB5 be a callback to the DB5 he won in CR, and not the Goldfinger one? There's nothing to say it isn't the same car, but why have Q say "I thought I asked you to bring it back in one piece" if it's his own personal vehicle?

 

A few too many one liners. "S***" on the train was unnecessary, and a bit of a repeat of Q from when Bond took the car.

 

The ending was a bit... easy and it was all too obvious really, Blofeld was behind everything from the past three films, C is setting up some super surveillance network and he's a rogue agent. Bish bash bosh, they're both dead.

 

The score was really, really disappointing. Every setpiece had large quotes from the Skyfall score, there were very few if any memorable, new "that's the music from the blah blah" themes.

[Harmsway]

Wait a second...

Spoiler

Blofeld dies?

[Guy Haines]

I certainly very much liked it. Like football is a game of two halves, this was a film of such.

The first half is definitely a bit lighter in tone, if not in actual lighting - much of Rome we see in the dark!

PTC - incredible! How they got away with aerial stunts like that with hundreds if not thousands of extras below I don't know.

Up to Rome - as I said, lighter, Bond cheekier than before in dealing with M & Q. I liked how in the car chase around Rome it's clear things aren't quite working out for Bond as planned gadget wise. But we also start to piece together who Oberhauser is, and at first it isn't obvious.

Austria - more deep and brooding. Jesper Christiensen take a much bigger "cameo" than usual and the pieces start to fit together. Mayhem involving an aeroplane and several vehicles.

We start getting deep and more "Skyfall" like once we move to Tangier - not before a bone crunching train fight involving Bond and Hinx, though.

Professional reviewers have mentioned the element of the surreal and it is when we get to the desert and the villain's lair - from the journey to it to the period in it that we get to this.

The "big reveal" - who is Oberhauser? Let me put it this way, without giving it away - after all that time here devising scenarios I came away thinking "Why didn't I think of that?" It struck me as similar to familial relations in an earlier Bond film.

Final showdown - dark, explosive, reminded me of SF.

The film spends a bit of time tying up some loose ends - hinted at in the rather weird title credits - but by the end I got the impression that all is not over yet for Craig's Bond. And that the loose ends have still not quite been tied up.

[RMc2]

Just seen it IMAX

 

What a disappointment. I was actively bored for large stretches of it. There simply isn't enough plot (or good dialogue) to sustain the 2hrs 22mins (before credits, I timed it) of film.

 

**MAJOR SPOILERS**

 

The gunbarrel is great. The opening shot is brilliant (if obviously stitched together, with some ropey compositing) - the PTS is outstanding, overall. Kleinman's titles are his weirdest and most underwhelming so far, imho. Much like the title song and the rest of the film - nice, but mostly meh.

 

Everyone is woefully underused. Bond's behaviour in certain scenes doesn't ring true. Denbigh gets as much screentime as Oberhauser. Hinx is hardly in it, and sent off in an odd way. The frequent cutaways to the MI6 crew kill the pacing of Bond's story and eat up time that should be devoted to him and Madeleine Swann. Incidentally, she is brilliant - but her character arc is a mess, and reeks of deleted scenes. Monica Bellucci is utterly, utterly wasted. Worst of all, Waltz is never given time to really shine - some hints of his brilliance, but that's it. His scheme is very, very underwhelming.

 

Some unintentionally funny moments throughout, as well as some intentional ones. Some great lines, and several not-so-great. Nice gadgets, but they do feel out of place after the previous films.

 

Pacing is tooooo slooooow in places. Some dramatic moments shown from terrible angles - either really badly edited by Lee Smith, or really badly directed by Mendes, as if he tried to subvert as much as he could.

 

Thomas Newman's score is a real disappointment. One gorgeous cue with Madeleine and Bond, and a blistering PTS theme, but the rest is just his SkyFall score recycled.

 

It starts so well, and has many great ideas. But the execution is messy. Bloated and sloppily paced.

 

I was underwhelmed.

[Harmsway]

Okay, what I really want to know is how folks felt about Waltz and how well Bloferhauser works as a character.

[RMc2]

Okay, what I really want to know is how folks felt about Waltz and how well Bloferhauser works as a character.

 

Both Waltz and his character are massively underused - but I do suspect we haven't seen the last of him.

 

The familial connections worked quite well for me. At least, much better than a lot of other franchises that have tried this kind of thing. I wish they'd made more of it though - we spend far too much of the film being teased with his identity and their connection, only for it to amount to virtually nothing. By that time, it's the end of the film and we really haven't got a sense of who Waltz's character really is: his background, his activities, his goals, his motivation.

 

It's essentially, "I'm the bad guy so I do bad things. Things I do are bad because I'm doing them, even if they're not inherently bad things."

[Guy Haines]

The screen time he's given I thought he was pretty good - as with Bardem in SF he's not on throughout but his presence permeates the movie. As a villain, like Silva he's a complete fruit-loop, but a bit more restrained.

Couple of other things. The trailers give a little bit of misdirection about some of the scenes, one in particular.

And there's a whole scene which has been adapted from one of the Bond novels, right down to dialogue - I recognised it as soon as I saw it.

[RMc2]

That's true - there is definitely a sense that Bond is working his way towards Oberhauser throughout the film.

[PeteNeon]

Spectre still exists really doesn't, it just no Blofeld?

[Harmsway]

And there's a whole scene which has been adapted from one of the Bond novels, right down to dialogue - I recognised it as soon as I saw it.

Colonel Sun?

[RMc2]

Spectre still exists really doesn't, it just no Blofeld?

 

Yeah, I got that feeling too!

 

It was odd that he was virtually alone at the finale, when there were so many others in Rome...

 

I'm pretty confident Bond 25 is going to pick this all up. It'll be something like the Bourne Supremacy's opening: Bond in retirement, happily partnered,until...